record of any earlier Teutonic occupation.[1] Such a previous occupancy rarely occurs, as Latham has pointed out, without leaving some traces of its existence by the survival here and there of descendants of the older occupants. In Germany, east of the Elbe, no earlier inhabitants than the Slavonic have been discovered, excepting those of a very remote prehistoric age. At the dawn of German history no traces are met with of enthralled people of Teutonic descent among the Slavs east of the Elbe, and there are no traditions of such earlier occupants, while the oldest place-names are all Slavonic. If there were Germans, strictly so-called, east of the river in the time of Tacitus—i.e., long-headed tribes—their assumed displacement by the Slavs between his time and that of Charlemagne would have been the greatest and most complete of any recorded in history[2] Ethnology and history, therefore, alike point to people of Sarmatian or Slavic descent—i.e., brachycephalic tribes—as the earliest inhabitants of Eastern Germany, and indicate some misunderstanding in this respect by the commentators of Tacitus.[3] In Eastern Germany place-names survive ending in -itz, so very common in Saxony; in -zig, as Leipzig; in -a, as Jena; and in -dam, as Potsdam. All these places were named by the Slavs.[4]
The statement of Bede that the Rugini or Rugians were among the nations from whom the English were known to have descended was contemporary evidence of his own time. The Rugi are also mentioned by Tacitus.[5] Their name apparently remains to this day in that of Rügen Island, situated off the coast which they occupied in the time of the Roman Empire.
As Ptolemy tells us of the wenedæ seated on this same Baltic coast, and as they were Sarmatians or Slavs, it
